Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

My fiance and I are planning our wedding that is in 5 weeks. We spent a few grand more than we intended and decided to try for a personal loan. I went on-line and started filling out applications for personal loans for people with bad, low, or no credit. The funny thing is- I thought I was being smart. Any company that asked for our bank info in the application (so if we were approved the money could be deposited into our account. Yeah, Right.)I skipped over. I also stayed away from payday loans.

After a day or two, We started hearing back from companies. All but one denied our request.So at first I was thinking "why are they helping us when all others denied us?" but why look a gift horse in the mouth.right? LOOK!! Well we contacted our consultant "Alonso" and he sounded very professional. He told us we were approved for a $3,000 loan but we would need 1 of 3 things.. a car that is a 2008 or newer(fully pd off), a co-signer, or $326. for insurence/security deposit. We figured if this is a scam why would we get a choice, wouldn't they have told us we had to pay $326? So, we told him we would pay for the insurence, how do we pay it since we live in south jersey and this co. is in Brooklyn NY. He said go to Western Union and send the money to Michael Croslyn- in London, Ontario, Canada.HMMM,Why? We ask. Alonso had left for the day so we asked the "office manager" why if they are in NY are we sending money to canada. We are told its because they dont actually lend us money. All they do is find a bank that will loan it to us and they use banks in North America and Europe as well as in the U.S but the U.S banks denied us. That rang true because all the other co. we went to did deny us. Everytime we felt doubt we were always reassured and their answers all made sense especially to people who never applied for a loan before and have no idea how it works. Alonso e-mailed us the complete application and terms of our agreement. We needed to fax that back with a copy of our drivers licenses and S.S cards. In his e-mail there's a link to the company's web site. Click on it and it takes you to a very prof. looking site. At this point, I'm still not sure about this place.To reassure myself, I went on line and typed in the web site. I get like 3 or 4 hits only for sites about profiles. Nothing about this company. I go back to my first search on personal loans and I can't find this company but I had filled out so many apps. I cant remember- did I find this company or did another company transfer me to them? By chance I came across a loan company www.badcreditloansapproved and I clicked on scams. EVERYTHING it said was on the money. It also said the easiest way to find out if a company is legit is 1- go to google maps or mapquest.Type in the company's street address and see what comes up but before I did this, the next day, I had my Fiance call "Alonso" and ask him for the address-not p.o box and phone #, not cell # of the bank in Canada holding our loan.We will contact the bank and if all's good, we'll go ahead with sending the money. "Alonso" says their company has the money they loan. We have to send the money to canada because thats where the corporate office is. Now why do we have 2 people, that work for the same company, not know if their company actually lends money or only finds the banks that loan the money? So, to google maps I go. The address pops up as a beauty shop. Eventhough at this point we haven't sent any money,times awastin. This wedding is coming. And now I'm crying. What do I do? I need this money so bad and fast. There has to be a good explanation right? Google maps must be wrong.Thats all, a mistake. I try mapquest.This time the address is found but there's no information. Is it a business, a home, or an empty lot? Mapquest gave me gas stations across the street and next door with the full business names, phone numbers, even business hours.But nothing on a loan company? So,I try reverse yellow pages. I put in the number and "This is a toll-free number. No other information can be found" pops up. Just to make sure it's not another mistake, I put in my own house phone number. I got a map that pinpoints my house, gives my age, the fact I have 3kids, and my last 3 addresses and for $30 I can check for a criminal record and my credit score! I'm nobody. All that pops up on me but nothing on a business that you would think wants people to have that stuff. Nothing. After we had first gotten approved, I did do a search on Google for this company. When I couldn't find anything I thought that was a good thing.When you search Westernsky(loan co) the first 3 hits is for their business but after that it's all people warning you not to deal with them. I figured if there was something wrong with Firstplus, something would've popped. but Nothing. The only way we were even able to get on there website was by clicking on the link in the e-mail that was sent to us. If you type that same address in, everything except them shows up. Then there's this Liberty First and Liberty Express. According to the forms we printed out thats the name of the loan company we are getting the money from. They give us the name but no address or phone number. I tried to google those companies. Again, everything but them.The most interesting part is- the loan is for a $3,000 5 year loan. by the time it's paid back in 5 years, the total to be paid back will be $3,417.46. So in 5 years they're only making $417.46 plus after the loan is paid in full, they will refund the $326 I had to pay as security. Up until yesterday 10/19/11, we were willing to send that money. Oh yeah-for us to actually recieve the money, we also had the choice of getting the $3,000 direct deposited into our checking account or a cashiers check delivered to us by DHL courier servces. So again, we thought why wouldn't they just say they need our account info if it's a scam? Because these guys are GOOD! So we kept letting them explain away things that didnt make sense to us because our desperation was doing the thinking for us. It was the pain in my gut that told me something wasn't quite right. After I typed this all up and reread what I wrote, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner. I guess, technically, I didn't get scamed because I never sent out the $326 and maybe by some slim chance these people are legit and if they are then maybe I made a mistake by not using them. $3,000 with an annual interest rate of 5.25%. 5 year loan with payments of $56.96 a month. sweet deal.But I'd rater borrow 3 and payback 5 and actually get the money. Check it out for yourselves. You decide.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

AUTHOR: Flynrider - (USA)

SUBMITTED: Thursday, October 20, 2011

POSTED: Thursday, October 20, 2011

" maybe by some slim chance these people are legit "

There is no chance that they're legit. This is a simple scam to get you to send an untraceable $326 to a scammer in Canada. Fake website, fake names, fake documents and disposable cell phones. As soon as they've ripped off a number of folks, they shut it down then start up all over again with new fake names, fake documents and disposable phones. They can't use the same name for very long because the people they scammed put the word out on the Internet. That's why you couldn't find anything about them on the Internet. They've probably been using this name for just a few weeks.

There are a few red flags you need to know before looking for a loan on the Internet. The first is that it would be illegal for a lender to charge upfront insurance or security deposit for an unsecured loan. Second, anyone who asks you to send them money via Western Union (or Moneygram) is scamming you. The only reason they do this is because that's the only untraceable way to get their hands on your cash. Legitimate businesses do not do this.

Lastly, you really need to up your skepticism a few notches. You have bad credit. No bank or finance company will lend you money even at a high interest rate, but this company wants to loan you money with better terms than someone with an 800 FICO score could get? It's just plain ridiculous. They might as well tell you that the loan comes with free unicorn rides. Most of the explanations they gave you were verifiably untrue, but you really wanted to believe them. That's how you get scammed.

For more info on this scam, the FTC has devoted a web page to it :

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/telemarketing/tel16.shtm

Congratulations on dodging this bullet, but be more careful out there.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.